While all of you are attacking Dembski, you are not making any kind of argument of your own. No one has even made an argument against one of his statements. You have simply discredited him and sworn at him. While you may not agree with Dembski or Intelligent Design, give me a rational explanation about what specifically is wrong with it and defend your own position. You are actually demonstrating exactly what he says neo-Atheists do in his book The End of Christianity when he says:

“Instead of presenting scientific evidence that shows atheism to be true (or probable), the neo-atheists moralize about how much better the world would be if only atheism were true. Far from demonstrating that God does not exist, the neo-atheists merely demonstrate how earnestly they desire that God not exist.”

Your criticism towards Dembski would be much more founded if you actually had an argument against him or his belief.

Here's your problem "his belief"

No one argues against his beliefs. No one cares. The problem is that he is lying and attempting to promote his beliefs as science and math. Which is fundamentally and in every way wrong.

Yeah, sounds like it's extra-credit time again. Same mindless defense of Dr.^2 without actually bothering to look at how many times his tripe has been shown to be meaningless bafflegab, intended only to sell books to the rubes.

How predictable.

--------------Lou FCD is still in school, so we should only count him as a baby biologist. -carlsonjok -deprecatedI think I might love you. Don't tell Deadman -Wolfhound

This text does not meet our specification. It is of exactly the correct length, note the large ellipsis in the middle, but it does not contain the text of the KJV. It is complex, because of its length bit it is not specified, hence there is zero CSI present in this text.

Now apply a regular process to this text. ROT13 is a regular process, a MOD 26 alphabetic shift of +13: a <-> n, b <-> o etc. What do we get when we apply this regular process to the text above? We get this:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth ... The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

That changed text meets the specification, and is the same length. Hence it is complex, specified and it is information. The transformed text contains CSI -- Complex Specified Information. A regular process has gone from zero CSI initially to a large quantity of CSI after its application. This invalidates Dr. Dembski's claim that regular processes cannot generate CSI.

While all of you are attacking Dembski, you are not making any kind of argument of your own. No one has even made an argument against one of his statements.

I've made arguments against his statements. In particular, I've made arguments against (some of) his statements regarding his so-called 'Explanatory Filter'.Dembski has stated that the Filter is simply a formalized, more-rigorous version of the design-detection methodology everyone uses. But the Filter is strictly an eliminative process -- you rule out Explanation A, then rule out Explanation B, and keep on ruling out explanations, and if you run out of explanations to rule out, you conclude 'Design' is the explanation -- and we don't use eliminative processes to recognize design. If we used eliminative processes to recognize who painted a particular painting, that process of recognition would look something like this: "Okay, it's not a Magritte… it's not a Rembrandt… it's not a Picasso… it's not a Van Gogh… (next several hundred, if not thousand, "it's not So-and-so" eliminations omitted 'cause they'd be horribly boring to read) …aha! Got it—that painting is a Rockwell!" But that doesn't happen; nobody recognizes a Rockwell because it's not like [insert list of painters it isn't like]. Rather, we recognize a Rockwell because it is like a Rockwell. You don't recognize Rockwell-style brushstrokes because they aren't the sort of brushstrokes used by [insert list of other painters]; rather, you recognize Rockwell-style brushstrokes because you know the characteristics of Rockwell's brushstrokes, and you can recognize those characteristics when you see them.More generally, we don't recognize any member of Category X on the grounds that it's not similar to things which are not members of Category X; rather we recognize a member of Category X on the grounds that it is similar to known members of category X.Contrary to Dembski's Filter, which is built on the presupposition that we recognize Design on the basis that Design is not like non-Design, how we actually recognize Design is on the basis that Design is like known examples of Design.As well, I've argued that Dembski's Filter cannot do the job Dembski claims it can unless it's being used by an omniscient entity. The Filter is all about elimination of non-Design explanation, right? Fine—but how can you eliminate a non-Design explanation you don't know about? Answer: You can't eliminate a non-Design explanation you don't know about. Therefore, Dembski's Filter necessarily yields a false positive result of "yep, it's Designed" whenever any investigator uses that Filter on a subject that has a non-Design explanation of which that investigator is ignorant.So... Dembski's Filter is not a more-rigorous version of intellectual processes which are in common use, even tho he says it is. Any time the Filter yields a result of 'yes, it's Designed', there is no way to distinguish between (a) the Filter having correctly identified Design in a Designed whatzit, or (b) the investigator being unaware of the non-Design explanation for a non-Designed whatzit.

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You have simply discredited him...

False. The person who has discredited Dembski is Dembski himself. All his critics have done is point out that he is discredited.

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While you may not agree with Dembski or Intelligent Design, give me a rational explanation about what specifically is wrong with it and defend your own position.

Asked and answered. Feel free to show me what's wrong with my criticism of Dembski's Filter.

Dembski himself, or as Dave Scott (Esq.) would say "his own self" wrote that the Explanatory Filter doesn't work, he can't make it work, he can't figure it out and he's given up on it.

The only thing the fucker Dembski does consistently is LIE!

So, little Twerp Pastor-to-Be, if that's what you are, you're getting a great education by one of the most despicable, roundly derided, self-made loser (Univ. of Chicago to Baylor to Big Seminary to Little Seminary to unaccredited bum-fuck diploma mill) pathological lying fuckwit sociopaths on the planet! Congratulations!

Oh, btw, I think you tallied your 10 responses so you'll get at least a "C" in Dembski's class on Totally Fucking Useless Shit.

So, let us not forget that Dembski's bullshit efforts at creationist mathematics have also been fully discredited by real mathematicians. Or, if you prefer, competent professional mathematicians have debunked Dembski's bullshit. Examples;

It's worth noting that our host, Wesley Elsberry, is co-author (with John Wilkins) of an essay called The advantages of theft over toil: the design inference and arguing from ignorance, which basically eviscerates Dembski's Explanatory Filter in a most rigorous manner. And since our new friend is concerned about the putative disrespect Dembski has received from the community of real scientists, perhaps he or she might want to browse the Invidious Comparisons forum on this board, which documents various examples of just this sort of impolite behavior on the part of ID=pushers -- including Dembski himself. By the way, do you know if Dembski has created any more Flash animations lately?

This text does not meet our specification. It is of exactly the correct length, note the large ellipsis in the middle, but it does not contain the text of the KJV. It is complex, because of its length bit it is not specified, hence there is zero CSI present in this text.

Now apply a regular process to this text. ROT13 is a regular process, a MOD 26 alphabetic shift of +13: a <-> n, b <-> o etc. What do we get when we apply this regular process to the text above? We get this:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth ... The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

That changed text meets the specification, and is the same length. Hence it is complex, specified and it is information. The transformed text contains CSI -- Complex Specified Information. A regular process has gone from zero CSI initially to a large quantity of CSI after its application. This invalidates Dr. Dembski's claim that regular processes cannot generate CSI.

rossum

BTW, the Hebrew version of ROT13, Atbash, is used in the Bible itself.

Hey joe g (or any other IDiot), do you still want to argue that ID isn't a religious agenda? Do you still want to argue that your hero and often appealed to ID expert and authority dembski doesn't believe and assert that the designer is the christian god? Do you agree with dembski that the designer is the christian god? Do you still want to argue that ID has no dispute with common descent? What all do you think of dembski's comments?

And hey joe, is your muslim god allah the same as the christian god yhwh?

Edited by The whole truth on May 09 2012,15:15

--------------Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. - Jesus in Matthew 10:34

But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me. -Jesus in Luke 19:27

Wow, it did me good to stop by after a long absence and see this old thread near the top! Makes me pine for those good 'ole days of Friday meltdowns and bodacious wagers.

--------------Mysticism is a rational enterprise. Religion is not. The mystic has recognized something about the nature of consciousness prior to thought, and this recognition is susceptible to rational discussion. The mystic has reason for what he believes, and these reasons are empirical. --Sam Harris

Many definitions of miracles exist, but the one central to this discussion treats them as events beyond the ordinary powers of nature. Men dead and buried for three days don't rise again simply through the ordinary forces of nature (Mary Shelley's Frankenstein notwithstanding). Likewise, it is an open question whether purely natural forces are able to produce the information-rich structures that we find in living things. To say that Darwin or his naturalistic successors have solved this problem is delusional.

{emphasis added}

Hmm. However, believing that a dead guy became alive just because a 2000 year old legend based on scant hearsay evidence provided by someone with an agenda says so is not delusional?

Skeptical, I am.

Whose delusion is better supported by the scientific method?

--------------The majority of the stupid is invincible and guaranteed for all time. The terror of their tyranny is alleviated by their lack of consistency. -A. Einstein (H/T, JAD)
If evolution is true, you could not know that it's true because your brain is nothing but chemicals. ?Think about that. -K. Hovind

I am going through books and papers today, and ran across my presentation materials for the 1997 "Naturalism, Theism, and the Scientific Enterprise" conference. They are a set of overhead transparencies.

But it was essentially Dembski's first primer on genetic algorithms. I intend to put it into a digital-friendly format and make it available.

Let us make this easy. You falsely claim that the multiple quotes I gave from Mike Behe misrepresent his beliefs. These are; there is some attribute of life that demands a supernatural being, and that he repeatedly has identified this "intelligent designer" as the God he worships.

Let that obvious fact go.

What, or who do you believe created the Universe, and life?

I have read your book, "Darwin Day in America." I have it next to the keyboard as I write. You clearly reject the notion that there is any other being other than the biblical God that could be the "Intelligent Designer." But here is your chance to publicly deny that you do exclusively attribute the creation of the universe, and humans to your God. Do you?

In your book, you attribute every ill imaginable to the evil materialism of science. You use more careful word selection than Ken Ham, or Kent Hovind but your meaning is totally clear. Do you deny here in public that the Christian beliefs you hold are the same ones you want to replace the "scientific materialism" you reject?

And while we are at it; How old is the Earth? Was there a Global Flood as described in Genesis? Was Eve created from a rib from Adam?

He is long gone.

--------------"Science is the horse that pulls the cart of philosophy."